If you truly believe that the meat industry is "just for our pleasure and convenience", you honestly have a mental illness. I don't say that with hyperbole. You are in the same category as people who hear voices.

Personally my health noticeably deteriorates when I don't include some dead animal in my diet. It might be possible to substitute insects but is raising and killing a bunch of insects less morally objectionable to raising and killing chickens, rabbits or cows? If so, why?

I can't comment on what your particular doctors were thinking, but there is now a general consensus that a low-meat or no-meat diet is best.

I'm sorry, but there is not - unless you intentionally seek out specialists who are biased towards your point of view. Which is very likely if you follow the references in various vegetarian/vegan literature.

The consensus is that humans are omnivores, and their digestive system is tuned towards a mix of meat and plant food. It is possible to go plant-only with a variety of artificial supplements, but definitely isn't natural or superior.

Actually, we kill and eat animals because we are hungry, and we need to eat. The world does not have enough resources for everyone to be a vegetarian, or even a vegan. If you think you can grow arable crops on all farmland, you're welcome to come to the north-west of Scotland and try your hand at raising crops on a hill farm. Sheep and cows do just fine on it. Give me a shout once you've worked out how to plough a peat bog on a one-in-five slope.

And I don't know about northwest Scotland, but around the world it is much more common for meat to be a luxury item and for plant-based human food to be the easy, inexpensive course. In most cases, meat animals compete with humans for plant-based food sources, and eating meat is a less efficient use of land than just eating the plants.

"Most cases" being where you've got lots of nice flat arable land. As I say, if you can figure out how to efficiently grow crops on a hill farm, you might be onto something. You haven't got long, though, because the oil is running out and cheap vegetables will be *gone* - back to an omnivorous diet when that happens!

However, you should realize that it's nothing about our "pleasure and convenience" involved with the food industry involved with livestock.

Look at the teeth in your mouth. If you were purely an herbivore, you wouldn't have what we call the eye-teeth in your mouth- you'd have a mouth more resembling a horse's or a cows. Seriously.You should note, that your body is an omnivore's meaning that it doesn't give a flip about your sensibilities and feelings and is design

That's all fine if we want to continue to be nothing more than animals. However, over-riding our natural impulses is also a key element of humanity.There are plenty of advantages to not eating meat, health wise, environmentally, as well as ethically.

What's more, unless we start eating each other, eating meat isn't going to be viable for every much longer. It takes 100 cal of grain to make 1 cal of beef.At current rates of environmental degradation and population growth, the mass of humanity will be veget

Yes, you're quite right, some beef is fed on grass, and that beef is healthier to eat, and people can't digest grass.

And some grass fields aren't arable no matter what, while others are irrigated and could be used for crops instead, which people could eat.

It's a complicated picture and yes, excuse me for over-simplifying: grain-fed beef is an energy loser, grass-fed less clearly so but possibly so (and maybe we'd be better off eating something else grass-fed).

You're oversimplifying a very, very, very complex system. We're getting better at creating vegetarian diets that can fulfill our bodies needs, but we're not quite there yet. And to remove the effects of livestock completely you're talking about a vegan diet and not a vegetarian one (A milk producing cow still requires an inefficient amount of grain to keep producing milk). And there are zero vegan diets that come anywhere close to meeting our bodies needs. And the diets that come closest are thanks to

You post is rationalization at best. Your claims for vegetarianism are easily refuted and shown as the ramblings of someone who gets halfway through a problem and assumes they have the answer.

1) health wise

Wrong. Vegetarian diet is so unhealthy that you can frequently spot vegetarians by sight. They tend to be gaunt. Low in muscle mass and low in muscle tone. When vegetarian from childhood, they tend to be shorter due to malnutrition.

I would love to see a citation of the program currently in place that pays people to not grow grain. The Farm Subsidies Act of 1973 pretty much eliminated the act of paying farmers to underproduce or not produce crops. Subsidies since then have favored over-production, particularly beneficial to very large companies and very damaging to small, family farms.

That's all fine if we want to continue to be nothing more than animals

Actually, the vast majority of animals are vegetarian (or herbivorous). So far, humans are the only animals to live an agrarian existence. The earth just does not have the resources to sustain turning all farm land into arable land. In 50 years time when petrochemicals are too scarce to support your arable-only farms, you'll need to switch back to eating meat.

He was talking w/a person excluding all meat (Vegan...duh...) and wondering why his ratio was zero and insisting on everyone else's to be the same- which is what most of the people pointing out his personal preference versus the reality of his body were pointing out. Not eating meat isn't healthy in the slightest for Humans, contrary to popular beliefs to the otherwise (A hint should be showing in your and everyone else's mouth...eye-teeth aren't needed in herbivores (which what a Vegetarian and a Vegan is

How can you make a blanket statement like this? Is this true of all hunter-gatherer societies worldwide, and throughout (pre-)history? For instance it would surprise me to learn that Great Plains Native Americans only ate buffalo meat once per 20 days.

I'm not sure what I should go after first, the massive non-sequitur or the blatant naturalist fallacy. Perhaps I should start by asking you when was the last time you chased down, killed and ate an animal using nothing but your physical prowess and devilish cunning, since you seem to think that that's how modern humans acquire their animal products...not, you know, herding docile, tamed animals from the pens we keep them in their entire lives into narrow boxes where we can kill slaughter them without them

No, I don't. I'm sure there are animal products used in the production of some of the things I rely on for survival, but there's nothing I can do about that. Vegans avoid animal products to the greatest extent possible. Obviously we can't effect any change in society if we refuse to be a part of it at all.

As for the scarcity argument, are you kidding? You do realize that like 80% of the grain we grow is being consumed by animals that humans will eat later, right? There's plenty of room to grow plant

You're obviously not thinking clearly. Possibly improving your diet by including some oily fish would help with that.

Right, here goes, one point at a time. You avoid animal products. This means that to grow your vegetables, you can't use animal-derived fertiliser. Now, okay, I will admit I am being somewhat facetious by saying that if you're a vegan, you can't spread manure from cows. Call it trolling if it makes you feel better. You certainly can't use BBM (blood and bone meal) which is an awesome wa

Millions and millions of people can live malnourished for decades before they end up dead.

There are health issues that can be mitigated by reducing meat in the diet, some rare ones that may require eliminating it. But child growth and development is dramatically stunted, leading to serious long term medical problems for children on "vegan" diets.

Show me one reputable study that claims that a completely vegan diet is healthy from conception, pregnancy, breast feeding and growth through adulthood. There isn't

See? When you ban it just because there's no use for it but fun, we get to ban all sorts of things. Log off and parcel your computer for shipment to me, too. I have a strong feeling you're not using it for survival, because you didn't get paid to make that post. Or did you?

I guess you think modern tools are the first ones ever built and that we never could trap or hunt in packs. I've got news for you. Humans are more like wolves socially than like sheep. Knives and spears have existed for millions of years. Deadfalls, pit traps, and snares have existed for quite some time, too. Humans didn't wrestle the woolly mammoth one on one. Stampeding a herd over a cliff is a lot easier than strangling a steer. Fishing, snake catching, grabbing birds in the nest, throwing rocks at rabbi

One also wonders why they switched from the previous use... Where the expected higher oil prices and/or some sort of biofuel subsidy good enough to make it cost effective, or did feeding animals their own ground up con-specifics break some new health and sanitary regulation?

I suppose they could also have just taken advantage of some improvement in refining technology to change the point of combustion. I'd suspect that a coal-fired plant wouldn't even notice some chicken fat mixed in with the coal; but that the price per ton paid for the fat would be unexciting; while, with the right refining technology, you could turn those same lipids into a vehicle fuel, which is rather more valuable per ton....

Unlike cattle, chickens are not "fattened up". Marbling is not a desirable feature in chicken meat. They get plenty of residual fats from the soybean meal that constitutes nearly half of typical feed. The chicken fat was probably used in pet food or cattle feed previously.

There was a plant owned by Renewable Environmental Solutions near Carthage, MO that would take leftovers from Tyson's chicken plants and turn it into various oils, including fuel. Problem was that the plant *stank* and the wind sometimes blew the odor into town, leading to many complaints and attempts to fix it.

Eventually the state shut 'em down because they were unable to control the smell. Maybe this place in Louisiana is way out in the middle of nowhere, so they won't have to worry so much about the neighbors complaining.

Supposedly they were unable to conclusively link the odor to the plant - people complained about the smell even when the plant wasn't operating. The state suspension was only temporary and the plant operated afterward in face of more complaints. But despite having proven that the odors were not coming from their plant and spending millions on upgrading tech to deal with the potential odors the whole thing kinda went belly-up when the parent company declared bankruptcy.

As President Barack Obama unfurls his fuel-economy standards and Congress takes up global warming regulations, it’s useful to remember that what emerges from environmental policymaking is not necessarily what’s best for the planet, but instead what’s best for special interests.

Consider the epic and somewhat bizarre struggle over clean fuels that ended last week. As usual, special interests were central to the drama. But the antagonists seemed right out of a Monty Python sendup of Washington politics: An oil company, hoping to profit from making trucks run on chicken fat, was thwarted by the soap industry’s lobby.

The chicken-fat story is a cautionary tale about how environmental policy actually gets made.

It began in 2005, when President George W. Bush signed an energy bill including a $1-per-gallon tax credit for “renewable diesel” fuel created through “thermal depolymerization.” Writer Rina Palta reported in the liberal American Prospect that Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., wrote the measure “to benefit a floundering company in his home district that produces boiler fuel from turkey offal, which did not qualify chemically as ‘biodiesel.’ ”

At the time, Congress was eagerly providing subsidies to turn plants and animals into fuel, so it didn’t seem farfetched to boost the cause of fowl entrails. But unintended consequences soon arrived, proving once again that the biggest companies usually find a way to profit from government intervention.

In April 2007, the Internal Revenue Service ruled that Blunt’s tax credit had broader applications. Within two weeks, ConocoPhillips and Tyson Foods saw that the IRS had opened the door for a joint venture to melt chicken, cow, and pig fat into diesel fuel. Conoco Chief Executive Officer James Mulva was honest about his unusual undertaking: “It’s not profitable without the $1 per gallon tax credit,” he said at a news conference.

But this renewable fuel had enemies. First, Democrats didn’t like any subsidy that helped an oil company like Conoco. (Blunt, for his part, said he never wanted to help oil companies, and that the law should be changed.)

Second, business lobbyists were also working to kill the subsidy for chicken fat. The obvious opponents were chicken fat’s competitors — the companies that turn vegetables into diesel fuel. The National Biodiesel Board, which spends nearly $1 million a year on lobbying, pushed hard to ensure the $1-per-gallon subsidy for clean diesel didn’t also apply to the Conoco-Tyson operation.

But the issue of “renewable biodiesel” also turned up on the lobbying filings of the Dial Corporation and the Soap and Detergent Association. Just as ethanol subsidies have driven up the price of food, it turned out that fat-to-fuel subsidies boosted the cost of manufacturing soap, which is also made of animal fat. So Dial and the Soap and Detergent Association, displeased that Tyson now had somewhere else to peddle its fat, also lobbied to kill the chicken-fat diesel subsidy.

While their own interests were obvious, the soap and biodiesel lobbies argued that chicken-fat diesel was not good for the environment. But the Environmental Protection Agency ruled this month that “biodiesel or renewable diesel made from animal fat or used cooking oil results in an 80 percent reduction from carbon emissions versus petroleum diesel,” according to Darling International, a company that deals in animal-fat diesel. Darling added in its first-quarter 2009 report, “That is the highest level of carbon reduction available

The problem wasn't the stink. It was the economics. From the get go, they were relying on subsidies [ncpa.org] to make the process pay.
These kind of businesses sprout up whenever there are government subsidies to be had or fuel prices spike. Their prospectuses will have a phrase that states that the company isn't profitable if you take away the subsidies or it will be profitable if the price of fuel rises faster than the rate of inflation.
Had Renewable really developed a viable technology that delivered fuel at $

It's delicious is what it is. I remember growing up we would have it during Passover. Spread some of that rendered chicken fat on a piece of matzoh and sprinkle on a little salt. Delicious! (If you're thinking it sounds disgusting, it tastes kind of like a rich butter.) Yes, it is awful for you, but most things that taste really good are bad for you if you eat too much of them.

So we thought this biofuel should be great. But now recent studies have found some evidence that indicates that biofuel is even worse for humans! Norwegian researchers have found this (published in a large norwegian magazine named technichal weekly).Read this article [google.com]. The findings are new, but disturbing for the future of biofuel.

To put this in perspective, the newspaper article you link to describes some scientists who've done a computer simulation of burning mixtures including biodiesel (a particular type of biofuel), and predict that it will produce a greater amount of PAHs, which are known to cause cancer, than simulated pure fossil fuels. As far as I can see, they've not even burnt anything.

Assuming real experiments match their simulation, the mixture will most likely be tweaked a bit--some chemical change, some additive, or something--to bring down the resulting amount of PAHs. We already drive around with catalytic converters bolted to our cars to clean up various pollutants. What you've described is a minor pothole in biofuel development, not the roadblock you seem to be implying. By far the greater challenge is how to devote the necessary land to grow biofuels while we simultaneously increase food production to feed a growing world population, and try to conserve land for nature.

When you're threatened by a stranger,When it looks like you will take a lickin', (cluk, cluk, cluk)There is someone waiting,Who will hurry up and rescue you,Just Call for Rendered Chicken! (cluk, ack!)

I read in a few places that I can't remember right now that it takes feeding an animal 26 calories to get 1 calorie of food out, by eating their meat. In other words you have to put more energy in than you get out. This is good for Tyson's if this is about waste they could not do anything else with. It isn't an alternative energy solution though. It isn't even an efficient way to get food.

People kind of have a taste for meat though. I don't think anyone is selling this as "the solution to oil dependence" or anything, but it *is* a way to recycle waste from a food production process that will occur anyways. Other than people liking short sound-bitey things I don't know why everyone has this need for there to be a single tech that solves all energy problems in the work.

Combustible liquid fuels powering ICE-powered cars is the situation for the near future. Given that, anything that lets us

Well, the 26 calories is probably as much of a guess as the other figures I've heard reported, anything from 2 to 100.

The thing is, those calories, 26 if you like, can come from stuff that humans can't eat, like grass. Animals can (and do) graze on farmland that isn't really terribly suitable for growing crops. Without raising animals for meat, most of the people in the world would starve.

Factory farms feed cows other things than grass because it is more efficient ( cheaper and more profitable). Grass fed beef would be expensive beef beyond what many Americans can afford, let alone other people in the world.

Marginal land, is just that marginal land. There isn't enough of it to raise enough life stock to feed a significant number of people.

I don't mean any personal insult to you, but you last statement is egregiously wrong. Raising animals for meat actually contributes to world hunger.

That's because cows don't eat grain. It is uneconomic to feed cows grain, which is why no-one in their right mind does it. It's okay to do it in the US, where you have masses of cheap, heavily-subsidised grain. That said, here in the UK we do often feed cows spent mash from breweries and distilleries, which is a great way of getting rid of something that would otherwise just rot and turn nasty. Spend mash dumped in the ground == stinky sour

I assume the submitter was joking, but chicken fat is also added to pet foods. I saw the chicken fat on ingredient labels at Costco. We just switched from a dog food that had corn in it, based on a friend's advice that a corn allergy is common in dogs. Wish we had known 6 years ago.

It's rather shocking that one company can actually *source* 75 million gallons of chicken fat per year in one country. How many billion chickens have to be slaughtered to make 75 million gallons of chicken fat?

Per USDA figures [worldpoultry.net], there were about 765 million chickens slaughtered in the US last year. The major share of the "fat" is probably the oil used to fry things. The US produces [foodnavigator-usa.com] something over 12 million metric tons of fats and oils per year, about 70% of that vegetable oils. Back-of-the-envelope, 12 million metric tons of the stuff is on the order of 3 billion gallons.

As cited in another response [slashdot.org] to your post, it's about 3 billion chickens to make 75 million gallons of oil, at about 40 chickens per gallon. But that fat doesn't come from whole new chickens - it comes from fat from chickens already slaughtered. The fat is either a waste product currently "discarded" in landfills or holding tanks, or else possibly used in other applications not as valuable as the fuel oil product. My understanding is that the chicken industry, despite finding all kinds of uses for every par

I have a friend who produces biodiesel semi-professionally (sells to local farmers to run their tractors and other farm equipment, the rest is unofficially sold to friends) and for a while he was using rendered chicken fat. The raw material stinks like hell, but the resulting biodiesel doesn't really smell like much of anything. Remember that the manufacture of biodiesel is a chemical process that changes the oil into something else. The chicken fat no longer exists at the end of the process. Any odor is due to particulate or a fraction of oil that wasn't completely converted.

Generally all biodiesel smells the same unless it's been manufactured improperly. I've managed to get some in my mouth before (a siphoning error). It doesn't have much of a taste but it coats your mouth with a terrible film that is very hard to get rid of.

One time I was over at the plant with my dog. She managed to find an open container of chicken fat and stuck her head in there. I don't know how much of it she ate (drank? gulped?) but you can imagine, if you dare to, what sort of things were coming out of the other end of the dog for several days afterward. Oh god... Oh, oh god.

I'm not a vegetarian so not too worried about the air smelling like fried chicken, but I'll bet if that's all you could smell any time you walked outside you would get sick of it. I would be more concerned about the impact this would have on Tyson land use, run-off, and disease control (antibiotics). It's already pretty f#cked up.

Considering how badly poultry is handled (and killed) compared to cows and piggies, this means breeding huge batches of chickens, let them develop physical injuries while trapped in a small box with 1000 other chickens, share space with dead chickens no one is taking care of, and get killed while being skinned alive. Exactly the same as the "for food" poultry industry.I am no PETA guy, but the treatment of birds by farmers and laborers is remarkably cruel. From the designers of the cages (filthy and lacking